The Washington Establishment Panics Jeffrey Lord
Ya can’t make it up.
Here’s the headline in the Washington Post from the Post’s Erik Wemple.
Staffers at The Hill press management about the work of John Solomon
The story reads, in part:
A group of newsroom staffers at The Hill have complained to management about stories written by John Solomon, the publication’s executive vice president of digital video. The complaints were launched in December when Solomon and reporter Alison Spann broke a story under this headline: “Exclusive: Prominent lawyer sought donor cash for two Trump accusers.”
The gist of Solomon and Spann’s story: Prominent California lawyer Lisa Bloom worked to secure payments for women who “made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race.” The story cited “documents and interviews,” plus the on-the-record explanations by Bloom herself.
The story impressed the conservative media world. Fox News host Sean Hannity called it a “bombshell report,” while conservative websites aggregated away.”
And then there was this, also from the Post’s Wemple on Solomon. The headline:
Sources: The Hill’s John Solomon offered money to Bill Clinton for an interview series
In which the Post’s Wemple attacks Solomon for pitching David Frost-Nixon style interviews with the former President in which Clinton, like Nixon before him, would get paid for his historical reflections.
Hmmmm. Two attacks on John Solomon in the Washington Post? Why might this suddenly be?
Full disclosure, yes, I now write columns for Sean Hannity’s website. And I have also been published at the Hill.
But let’s consider something else about this Washington Post/Wemple story. Its timing.
Sean Hannity has been relentless in doing what the mainstream media has refused to do — pursue the clearly very real story of Washington Insiders (aka “the Deep State”) — going out of their way to manipulate the FBI and the Justice Department to save Hillary Clinton’s electoral bacon and fry Donald Trump’s. The New York Times even did a feature story several weeks ago in its Sunday magazine titled “How Far Will Sean Hannity Go?” In which the Times worried that Hannity was a Trump media supporter with — oh nooooooo! — a real audience! (Thirteen million gasped the Times.)
Now. Consider.
In the course of this reporters Solomon and Sara Carter — Solomon was doing joint reporting for months with Carter at the Sinclair Broadcast owned Circa before joining the Hill and has now in this latest story teamed with Alison Spann to continue the work — have been doing seriously professional deep-dive work on this story of the Washington Establishment in its many incarnations trying to deliberately sabotage the Trump presidency. Hannity featured the Solomon-Carter duo work for months and even now the two are frequently mentioned in the same sentence for their work even as the Hill and Fox where they have both migrated are two separate institutions. To say that the two have been like journalistic dogs with a bone would be to understate. If one was around in the Nixon era (ahem) one can easily see the two as a new Woodward and Bernstein, the two stellar journalists who dug and dug and dug to unearth the Watergate scandal.
Now comes news that House Republicans have finally pried an internal document out of the clutches of the FBI. Against the will of FBI and Justice professionals. Having read it they are demanding a public release. Here is the headline from Sara Carter’s site:
Bombshell Intelligence Report Exposing FISA Abuse
Extensive abuse uncovered that could lead to the removal of senior government officials
The very first paragraph of Carter’s story says this:
A review of a classified document outlining what is described as extensive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse was made available to all House members Thursday and the revelations could lead to the removal of senior officials in the FBI and Department of Justice, several sources with knowledge of the document stated. These sources say the report is “explosive,” stating they would not be surprised if it leads to the end of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into President Trump and his associates.
What is the connection to these sudden headlines at the Post about Solomon? In this quarter it certainly seems that a year of Trump-Russian collusion stories in the mainstream media are not only producing nothing but in fact are seriously on the verge of dramatically illustrating the extent to which the Washington Establishment went out of its way to try and sabotage the Trump presidency. So what to do? Why — attack John Solomon, Carter and, but of course, Hannity.
These attacks on Solomon, Carter, and Hannity reek of Washington Establishment panic that in fact as Hannity and others have said what is being uncovered here is indeed “worse than Watergate.” As the noose tightens — the journalists are attacked? As Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey would exclaim in his role as the “Church Lady” — “how connnnnveeeenient!”
Right this minute the Establishment media is awash in worship for the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks/Meryl Streep loving profile of the Washington Post titled, well, The Post. Which is the story of the Post versus the Nixon Administration over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. But do recall an earlier loving Hollywood treatment of the Post — Robert Redford’s All the President’s Men, the movie version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s bestseller about their unraveling of the Watergate scandal. In which the two revealed that in an attempt to threaten the Post and its publisher, Katharine Graham, Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell snarled in a phone call that if the Post did not back off of its aggressive Watergate reporting there would be trouble. As Bernstein, on the phone, tried to confirm with Mitchell an explosive story the Post was about to publish, the conversation went this way, as captured in the movie and reported by Graham herself in her memoirs as follows:
Mitchell exploded with an exclamation of “JEEEEEEESUS,” so violent that Carl felt it was “some sort of primal scream” and thought Mitchell might die on the telephone. After he’d read him the first two paragraphs, Mitchell interrupted, still screaming, “All that crap, you’re putting it in the paper? It’s all been denied. Katie Graham… is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”
Amazingly, the situation is now reversed. It is the Washington Establishment under the gun, and the sudden flurry of anti-John Solomon stories from the Post is today’s version of the Establishment saying to Solomon that his, um, tit will be caught in a big fat wringer if he and Sara Carter and Hannity and others keep digging.
My, how times have changed. The Washington Post becomes John Mitchell.
There is, of course, one way to find out and keep pursuing the truth in Woodward and Bernstein style. Release the Memo — and let Solomon and Carter and whomever else out there has the tenacity to get the truth continue do just that. And let the chips fall where they may.
Tits and wringers be damned.
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